Episode 3: The Keys

"I should like to love my country and still love justice."
- Camus, I think.

*********
We spent the week after Thanksgiving in South Florida. While the east end of Key West has become Franchise City, the Old Town is as engaging as ever. They still go down to Mallory Pier to celebrate the sunset and the jewelry carts and jugglers and fire-eaters still show up to squeeze out a few loose tourist dollahs. There's a new hotel with a terrace adjoining the pier, so now you can sit down and have drinks and snacks served by comely but scatterbrained waitresses, with Jimmy Buffett tunes from the house band.

The old conch houses - actually British Bahamian in origin - are never less than charming, with their tin roofs, rainwater cisterns, vertical shutters, and wraparound verandas. Great bursting tangles of multicolored bougainvillea and fragipani spill over wrought iron and picket fences. That week, most of them had more wreaths and ribbons and strings of lights than the average New Rochelle neighborhood. We passed the guys putting up decorations on the Gay and Lesbian Alliance headquarters. They weren't nearly as flamboyant as we'd hoped and we urged them to pile on the Christmas frou-frou.
*********************************
Gastromic trends are shifting and shuffling and racing as fast as are technological advances. Remember when sundried tomatoes and kiwi were must-have ingredients? The following are showing up on menus from New York to Las Vegas to Barcelona to Montreal. Check off those you've tasted:
scapes
sea urchins
yuzu
panko
Meyer lemons
fiddleheads
piquillos
fleur de sal
jamon serrano
miso
foams
And making their entrance:
pimientos de Padron
edamame
helado de queso
and the citrus of the moment, bergamots.

What you've been missing.
**********************
I was introduced to oyster shooters at several restos in Quebec last summer. There seemed to be no one recipe favored over the others, although it was typically something like a raw oyster in cold sake with ginger. Here's my own non-alcoholic semi-invention, which proved a hit at a recent gathering:

Sangrita Oyster Shooter
2 cups V8 juice
1 cup orange juice
2 ounces lime juice
2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce
2 teaspoons finely minced onion
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
Pinches of white pepper
Celery salt to taste
1 dozen shucked oysters

Shake all ingredients (except the oysters) to blend, then refrigerate. When ready to serve, drop one oyster into a two- or three-ounce glass and fill with sangrita.

Note: Oyster-less sangrita is a Mexican chaser to shots of tequila. Put tequila in the sangrita and you have a great Bloody Maria.
************************************
I can't be the only one who's delighted with the current cocktail craze. All those dreary wine spritzers of a decade ago cast an all-but-teetotalery pall over many a party. When we were in Key West, we enjoyed mango margaritas on the terrace of the aptly named Mango's. I couldn't find a recipe that didn't involve a lot of ingredients and peeling and mashing, so I made up this one:

Mangorita
3 ounces tequila
1 and a half ounces triple sec
1 and a half ounces lime juice
3 ounces mango nectar
Maraschino cherry (optional)

Shake all liquid ingredients together with ice and strain into a large martini glass. Drop in the cherry, if desired.
****************************************
For those of you whose preferred drink is a Cosmopolitan but who are a little bored with the same-old, here's a variation that has been received with favor.

Tears of the Prophet
2 ounces orange vodka (Absolut Mandarin is good)
1 and a half ounces pomegranate juice (currently marketed as "POM")
1 and a half ounces triple sec
Mint leaves

Shake the liquids together with ice and strain into a martini glass. Float two or three mint leaves on top.

********************************************
You don't have to thank me.
Geezer